Trends
- LitRPG goes mainstream. Some self-published LitRPG titles have been sold to traditional imprints, like Orbit. Read Vivian Nguyen at Publishers Weekly.
- “Just go independent” is not always feasible. A journalist discusses why starting a Substack or one’s own business is not the path for everyone in the media and publishing industry—not least because you become your own legal team, your own social media team, your own customer service team, etc. Read Molly White at Citation Needed.
- Who writes celebrity novels? Three ghostwriters and one agent discuss working with celebrities and the money involved. Read Sophie Vershbow at Vulture.
Self-Publishing
- Written Word Media 2024 Author Survey. To better understand what it takes to earn a living from self-published work, browsing this survey is always worthwhile. A very telling chart: the number of books published and monthly income bracket. You can see a clear step-ladder increase for authors with more titles on the market. Read Ricci Wolman.
Culture & Politics
- Inside the political book machine. How do publishers make decisions when election outcomes are unknown? Do their decisions influence national conversation? Read Sophie Vershbow at Esquire.
AI
- AI-generated material is flooding Medium. A recent analysis showed nearly 50 percent of Medium content is AI generated. Medium says it doesn’t care, as long as no one is reading it. (Authors still using this site to build their platform or get discovered seem to be living in a strange parallel universe where they haven’t heard of Substack.) Read Kate Knibbs at Wired.
- Cambridge University Press has asked its 20,000 authors for permission to license their content to AI companies. A CUP director said, “We made the decision that we wanted to ask authors, not because we think they shouldn’t want their content to be going in there, but we want to be able to tell them why this is a good thing, and for the authors to see that this is a good thing.” CUP says only a small number are declining to license. Learn more.
- Former OpenAI researcher says what the company does is a copyright violation. After leaving OpenAI in August, Suchir Balaji says ChatGPT’s use of training data shouldn’t qualify as fair use. Balaji was part of the team that built ChatGPT. Read Cade Metz at the New York Times.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.